Towers
by Graphospasm
Summary: He might not remember the first time they met, but he remembers the first she wasn't there. Very eventual HieixOC, HieiPOV.
1. Chapter 1: Of Leaving

Towers

Chapter 01:

"Of Leaving"

* * *

><p>She didn't disgust me before I got her a birthday present. Afterward she became weak, and I hated her.<p>

It's not my fault. I thought giving her the man she hated on a silver platter would help her become the fighter she is supposed to be—I didn't think it would turn her into a spineless shell of her former self, content to sit in darkness wasting her days on endless torture.

Not torture of her father, though, trapped in an undying plant for her amusement. I mean torture of her_self_. Her spirit dies a little with every cut and scrape of that fat man's flesh.

How was I to know what my gift would do to her?

How was I supposed to stay?

* * *

><p>I went to Human World because Demon World could offer me little more than fallen tyrants and broken promises. There was no place for me at Mukuro's side, because all that lingered in her sight was her father and the horrors she could show him.<p>

You can't blame me for leaving her.

Kurama tried, of course. He likes to give credit where credit is due, or so he claims, but I don't deserve that credit at all. I showed up on his doorstep because I had nowhere else to go, and when I told him what had happened (or, when he finished pulling the truth from my short answers and jerked nods) he sighed, leaned back in his chair, and told me to shut the window behind me.

"Why?" I asked. "I'll only leave again."

"But not right away," he said. Green eyes flickered at the night. "And it's storming."

Rain blew in the open window, scoring the back of my neck below my scarf. I liked the feeling of the wind in my hair. It was clean. There wasn't much else in my world that could claim as such.

"All right, or don't close it." Kurama sighed. "Ruin my carpet. Again."

_Such human concerns…_ Slowly, I turned and closed the window. When I looked back, Kurama was smirking. He had aged a little, I noticed, with leaner cheeks under brighter eyes. Still young, even by human standards, but how long had it been since I'd seen him last? Three years? Five? He hadn't entered the second Demon World Tournament…

"Thank you, Hiei," he said. "Now tell me again why you left Mukuro."

"_She_ left _me_, you imbecile," I growled. "She left _everyone_."

"All because of the plant I gave you?" he said. "The one you trapped her father in?"

"She sits and tortures him," I said. "She just sits. She never fights, ever." My lips curled. "It's pathetic."

"Then perhaps the plant was not the appropriate gift to give her?"

Kurama didn't know her like I did; he didn't know how the memory of her father plagued her; he didn't _see_. "I wanted to free her from him!" I snapped. "I thought—"

"But you only trapped her," came his calm reply. "Perhaps you didn't know her as well as you thought you did?"

I didn't answer, choosing instead to turn and open the window.

"Where will you go, Hiei?" Kurama asked when I put my foot on the roof outside. Rain stained my face; I didn't blink. "We all have lives here. You can stay with me for the time being, but there isn't a true place for you. I've given up being a demon."

"You're a fool," I said, not turning around.

His voice came soft. "Perhaps," he said, "but we all have lives. Yusuke, Kuwabara, myself…" He spoke the truth; I hated it. "Can you say the same?"

I did not shut the window behind me when I left.

* * *

><p>The Jagan found Yukina with little effort. She too had aged, taller and leaner and prettier than I'd left her, but her eyes… those hadn't changed at all. I could see kindness in her when she handed the oaf a plate of food and smiled a smile I was sure I'd never find aimed at me.<p>

Kuwabara _hadn't_ changed. This surprised me. He still fumbled around my sister, still spoke with clumsiness and honesty, still exaggerated his movements and motions just like any annoying human would. Braying laughter, an open face: that was Kuwabara as I'd known him, and that was Kuwabara forever, apparently.

If years hadn't managed to change him, what would?

He and Yukina lived in the same house—_Yukina is learning about Human World through the Kuwabara family,_ Kurama had told me during the first Demon World Tournament. Was that still true? I supposed so, considering the glimpses of Kuwabara's father and older sister I caught through the curtains in their home's front room. I stood up to my ankles in mud in a bed of flowers, just watching them talk because they looked like they belonged and watching was all I could do to feel the same, until a creaking door made me shrink behind a shrub.

"Hiei?" said the scratchy female voice.

It and the silhouette in the open front door belonged to Shizuru. I hadn't noticed her disappear from the scene inside. I moved so she could see me, heedless of the pouring rain, and I said nothing.

"You should say hello like a normal person sometime," she said, flipping her hair back. She attempted a small smile. "Baby bro would like to see you, despite what you probably think."

I turned from her, prepared to walk off into the storm.

"Yukina would, too," she called over thunder and water.

I left her there, alone.

* * *

><p>Yusuke didn't notice me until I let him. I stood watching him wrestle a tarp over an oversized cart painted with characters I couldn't read and the tarp kept getting blown away by the wind, and when it blew away from him across the pavement I stepped on it. He wheeled, ready to run after it before he realized the thing had been caught already, and when he saw that I was the one to catch it he froze, staring. A smile broke his face wide open.<p>

"Hiei, man!" he said, darting forward. Before I could jerk away he had thrown his arm around my neck, one hand ruffling up my hair just because he could. "It's great to see you, you little bastard! Hey, did you get taller?"

I wrenched away. He didn't stop laughing, pleased to see me. I said: "Detective."

"Not anymore!" he said, voice raised to combat the storm. "I stopped working for Spirit World before the last tournament. Remember? At the second one, I told you—"

I hadn't remembered until then. "You married Keiko," I said slowly. "Koenma didn't need you anymore."

"Yeah! Aw, man, that was like, a year and a half ago! Time sure does fly." He hadn't aged at all, I didn't think, especially when his eyes lit up with mischief like they did just then.

"Say, you still with Mukuro?" he asked slyly. "She wasn't in the last tournament, come to think of it."

"No," I said. I didn't say_: She was too busy playing with my birthday present to go; she was too busy torturing her father to care._

"Too bad neither of _us_ won." Yusuke sighed with regret. "I bet being king would beat making ramen every day, especially in this weather."

Thunder boomed, rain smacking Yusuke's normally slick hair onto his forehead.

"You gonna be in the next one?" Yusuke asked. "It's in, like, another year and a half. I'll be in it!"

I didn't answer him.

"And hey, what brings you to Human World, anyway?" Yusuke said. He shooed me off the tarp and knelt to gather it in his arms, shaking the water clear even though the rain made it a wasted effort.

I had disappeared by the time he realized I wasn't there to answer.

* * *

><p>Genkai was dead. I found her grave and cleared the dead leaves from the stone.<p>

Then I left.

She would not have wanted me to grieve.

* * *

><p>I didn't want to see the ferrygirl.<p>

* * *

><p>Fuck Koenma.<p>

* * *

><p>I thought about going back to Kurama that night, but I didn't and wandered into a…<p>

I think humans call them 'parks'.

Whatever. I don't really care.

* * *

><p>The storm broke with the dawn. A rain-glutted lake on the edge of a wood, a clearing on the edge of the lake, a tree in the middle of the clearing—that's what the dawn showed me when I jumped into the tree, settled down on a branch, and closed my eyes.<p>

I stayed there that day, all day.

I felt the sunlight on my face as I slept.

* * *

><p><span>NOTES:<span>

_This story isn't new to some of you. I posted this chapter on my deviantART page a few months ago to get some test-run comments. _

_Remarks on Hiei's narrative voice are SUPER APPRECIATED because I have trouble with him and I need to improve most desperately. _

_We might see more to this story pretty soon, but only if you guys think I've done the voice right. If not, I am more than prepared to scrap the whole thing and start over. I want to get him down right._

_The references to Mukuro's father and the demon plant thing and Hiei's birthday present are from the manga. Also, Genkai being dead, Yukina doing a homestay with the Kuwabara family, Yusuke running a ramen stand… that's the manga for you._

_This IS an OCxHiei story, but I think we might see a few HieixKurama and HieixMukuro moments worked in here and there (mainly through references to the past; you'll see what I mean soon). _

_The themes of this story are loneliness and isolation._


	2. Chapter 2: Of Returning

Towers

Chapter 02:

"Of Returning"

* * *

><p>Yukina was happy. Kurama was busy. I did not go back to see Yusuke, or Kuwabara, and I went back to Genkai's grave only once before going back into Demon World on my own.<p>

I wandered for a time in Demon World's farthest reaches, because Mukuro's territory did not interest me and the demons of her kingdom knew my face. They would want me to come back to them to lead when their true leader shirked her duty. I was her heir; _it's what you're meant to do_, they would say.

But I was not there for them, to lead them or to rule. I was there because…

…because—

Deep in Demon World, away from anyone who knew me, I realized I did not want my place at Mukuro's side. She could offer me nothing. I could not stay in her kingdom, and I knew no one elsewhere. I was feared by many, hunted by others, and while these upstarts provided me blood and the means of gaining strength, they did not provide a challenge, or a goal.

Someone tried to take my teargem, once, and I killed him. I do not remember his face. The only reason I remember him at all was because, as I stood over his cooling body and my fingers caressed the gem on my chest, his death made me realize: _I have no purpose._

And so, I went back to Human World.

At least there, I had a purpose, even if it was one as simple as keeping my sister—my sister whose gem I had fought so fiercely to protect—safe.

* * *

><p>Days drifted in and out of weeks; I don't know how many. I went back to the clearing I had found on my first trip to Human World and I stayed in it. Kurama didn't know; neither did Yusuke, or the oaf, or anyone. No one needed to know I was there. It was better that way. They'd only tell me to stay with one of them, but there was food in the woods, the untamed parts of the human park jumping and alive with things no humans took the time to see, and I didn't go hungry. Summer teemed with heat; I swam in the lake more than once, angering the swans before they caught my scent and knew me for the predator I am.<p>

I slept in the same tree I'd used on the first night. The sun rose across the surface of the lake each morning, turning the water gold.

Each morning, I shut my eyes against it.

* * *

><p>I didn't leave that city, or that park. I didn't know anywhere else in Human World, and I did not want to go back to Demon again. Time blurred into an unbroken stretch of dark days and bright nights. Once, I wandered among unknowing humans in the heart of their city before cloistering myself in the woods again. I hated their chatter, their lights, their need for companionship—it was a sign of weakness, that they couldn't be by themselves, not the way I could. I had nothing, I needed nothing; I needed no one, I had no one; this was how I wanted it, and this was what I needed.<p>

But a part of me whispered when I closed my eyes against the sun to sleep, _Why am I so restless, then?_

* * *

><p>I don't dream often, but when I do, it's of pain. Pain in others, pain I've caused, pain I've felt, pain I've witnessed, pain I couldn't stop—pain, pain, all pain. Yukina's face every time I tell her that her brother still eludes me, the pain those words make me feel when my skin itches with the desire to come clean, the way Mukuro looked every year on her birthday, before she had a way to re-gift her lifelong boogeyman with the pain he'd given her a hundredfold…<p>

I've only ever known pain.

Perhaps that's why I can ignore it so completely.

* * *

><p>Months, maybe—that's how long it took for something other than pain to invade my dreams. I don't remember the first time it happened, but it did, and then it happened again and again, and repetition bred tolerance, though not enjoyment. This new dream wove itself into the tapestry of my pained nightmares, dulling them until the pain was a mere backdrop to this new device. It wasn't a good new dream that invaded my day-nights, but it was different from the pain and so I did not seek to chase it away.<p>

I dreamed of humming, soft humming that sounded like a lullaby sung out of tune.

Not that I'd ever heard a lullaby before.

* * *

><p>I don't know what woke me the first time, and I don't remember what happened after. All I know is that I dreamed of pain and tuneless humming, and opened my eyes. It was midafternoon, and though the pain of my dreams faded with wakefulness, the humming didn't stop.<p>

I drifted back to sleep, puzzled when it followed me out of waking and back into my dreams.

* * *

><p>I came to realize that a human was the humming's source some time later. I woke at sunset, as was my custom, just in time to perceive a movement below me, on the ground and out of sight beneath the leaves of my tree. I listened to their voice fade as they crossed the clearing and vanished into the woods. I didn't try to follow them, and nothing about them registered as special.<p>

Besides the humming, of course. That I remembered, not that it was hard to forget after months of just accepting it. The next day I dreamed of the humming again, waking at sunset to listen to the sound fade into the trees beneath the crunch of clumsy steps on leaves.

* * *

><p>This continued for weeks—humming in my dreams, humming fading, humming, humming, humming, but it mattered to me little. This human with no sense of rhythm or pitch did not bother me while I slept and they left just as soon as I woke up; I didn't chase them off because of this. Had they been raucous, loud, unruly, perhaps I would have reacted differently, but this human merely hummed, and I could tolerate that. It did not disturb my sleep. Had it done so, I would have…<p>

I don't know what I would have done. I wouldn't have killed them. Scared them, perhaps, or maybe…

I don't know. But I didn't chase them away, regardless.

* * *

><p>The first time the human disturbed my sleep was, strangely, when they <em>didn't<em> hum—I dreamed of Mukuro running her father through with a sword and there was no hum to undercut the resulting screams, and I woke with a start and listened to realize I was very much alone. I sat up and looked around myself, tense even though I didn't know why, with my fingers gouging into the tree limb beneath me as I strained my ears to listen.

No one hummed. There was only the wind in the trees and the noonday sun—my nocturnal midnight—shining down.

I could not go back to sleep that day-night. The forest's silence seemed too loud; I wanted noise to drown out the sounds echoing in my head, the sounds of blades on flesh and Mukuro's laughter, and so I went to the one place I knew would possess more needless noise than any other.

I went to the city.

It was there I met Yukina.

I didn't mean to see her. I merely wandered among shopping humans, ignoring all but the ones who stared at my cloak with curious and critical eyes, and when those humans took notice of me I would glare and they would avert their gazes. They sensed in me something other, something furious, and something they could not contain, and so they ran from me as a sheep flees from a wolf.

That is why it surprised me, then, to feel a hand on my arm. I jerked away on instinct, hating the thought of being touched, and when I turned to snarl at the human to get away—

I froze when our eyes met, but not because of her power.

I froze because of her smile.

"Hiei-san," she said to me. She was out of breath, with pink cheeks and mussed hair. "Hiei-san, it is so good to see you again!"

I said nothing, too tongue-tied to reply.

Some say I am a quiet man. The truth is simpler: I don't know how to speak without sting. And I would never sting Yukina.

"I had no idea you were in Human World," she said, dropping the volume of her voice when humans passed around us. No one paid me any mind with Yukina there; they only stared at her, because she was beautiful and kind, you could see it in her.

I grunted a response. I didn't care how she took it.

"Has your tenure with Mukuro come to an end?" she asked.

Another grunt, even though she seemed interested, truly interested. My unbeating heart clenched; I hated the sentiment.

"I see," she said, though she did not. Her eyes went soft and apologetic, and then—I knew what was coming.

"Have you heard word… of my brother?"

I turned from her, there in the street, because lying to her when she looked at me like that—

"No," I said, and I didn't care that, when I jumped, it looked like I had vanished to the humans passing by.

I just didn't want to see the pain in Yukina's eyes.

* * *

><p>My favored tree welcomed me back. The leaves of it were just starting to turn from green to gold; the day was hot even though autumn was coming. I could taste the season on the air, and the only reason I took note of the girl—the girl playing in the shallows of my lake, the girl who played and hummed all the while—was because she reminded me of Yukina, who was already on my mind.<p>

* * *

><p><em><span>NOTES:<span>_

_ Next chapter, we meet(ish) the OC for the first time. I say 'ish' because we don't so much meet her as we do spy on her. Yeesh. _

_Hiei is weird. This version of him thinks funny. I was in a really weird mood after writing this chapter. I think he rubbed off on me?_

_And talk about symbolism. Hiei's words are rife with it, and I don't think he even notices. _

_Anyway, yeah. Hiei seems like the short-chapter type. Reflects his nature and terse voice. _

_Not much else to say at this point. PEACE OUT HOME DIGGITY DAWGS, of whom the following are members: _Arktos, Willowleaf2560, Koryu Elric, eragon 1228, yonet-chan, Lifeless College Girl, archangel fighter, Amy Willow, Juliet Romeo, loser94, Kaijin-san, (no name! Whoops!), Yoko Kiara14, Kajihenge Yoko, Teacup  
>Kitty, Ohh Taylor Jade, Somebody Standing There, DaAmazing Meepers, strawberry9560, phantomxofxmystery, ovenfreshh, Bi Gay Straight Who Cares (expect an email from me soon)!<p> 


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